


The Softer War

by KissedByNightshade



Series: The Softer War [1]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Fusion, Coping, Ensemble Cast, Families of Choice, Fatherhood, Gen, M/M, rebellion era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-10-03 22:44:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10260494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KissedByNightshade/pseuds/KissedByNightshade
Summary: The old fight so the young can survive. The young fight because they know nothing else.Part of a Star Wars Rebellion-era AU. Kensei-centric.





	

**Author's Note:**

> To keep things brief: this is the first part of what will (hopefully) be a larger Rebellion-era Star Wars au. It was surprisingly difficult to decide on tags for it, so hopefully people will be able to track it down. I had to make some decisions about which characters to include in the tags, but a lot of people make appearances!

Some people are simply not made for the hardships of war.

Kensei takes little pride in his ability to spot them; he does it almost reflexively, and in spite of what the Commander tells him. He sees them all around him, in his squadron, in his company; they’re the pilots who leave for battle and don’t return, the soldiers who do but look different. And he sees them as the ghosts who haunt him in his dreams.

Maybe things wouldn’t be so hard if there was ever an immediacy to them, or a finality. Maybe if he could see a receding back or the taillights of an X-Wing and know, _he’ll be back soon enough_ or _that’s the last time I’ll see him_.

Then again, that would probably suck too.

Trouble is, it’s hard to articulate just why he knows, and what it is he has to protect them from. Oh, sometimes it’s obvious — the soft ones are the first he noticed, the ones who had never seen or imagined themselves holding a blaster. They’re always the newest recruits, showing up in little timid gaggles from planets where the Empire has just begun to unleash its machination. He has to swallow down his revulsion every time; can’t tell someone to _go on home_ when often as not, there’s no home left for them.

He saves his lectures for the fiery ones — the recruits who show up ready to fling themselves against an Imperial squadron and let their corpse do the talking. Those are the ones Kensei grabs by the collar of their brand-new rebel fatigues and pulls out of line, only to hiss in their face, “Shut your mouth, ‘less you wanna get everyone here killed.” Because telling them to go home would be just as much a death sentence — a price of their own making, when they end up tossed in Imperial prison and shipped off to a labor camp. Or worse.

He knows well enough when there’s defectors. They stand out in a crowd — quick at attention, though their darting eyes give away just as much of their anxiety as the refugees. Kensei keeps his eye on them, though counterintelligence does a good job of weeding out the spies; truthfully, the defectors are an asset, with their Imperial military training. Usually fear (or desperation) pushed them into the clutches of the Empire, and fear will keep them far away, now that they’re branded as traitors.

There are other signs, too. Signs that someone is unfit for combat. Too much idealism, or too little. A touch of skulduggery too blatant. A revenge quest. Something to protect. Nothing left to lose. Too little experience, or too much.

That’s why he tries not to think about it so much these days. Because every time he does, he knows more and more fervently that not a single person in this base was made for the hardness of war.

Not even himself.

 

* * *

 

 

The base at Yavin is roomier and more ancient than the Dantooine base, with vines hanging across cut stone panels and growing through the cracks in the walls.Kensei likes it. No more underground bunkers, with their noisy fans pumping oxygen deep into the ground and the industrial sounds creaking into his bedroom and his skull day and night. Here, he almost dares to imagine a bedroom with a window, a set of personal items more extensive than those he can stuff into a rucksack at a moment’s notice. A full house, with a family to support rather than a platoon to manage. But that’s all just personal fantasy.

He does, at least, get his own bedroom, small as it is. A perk of his rank, if you will, though he isn’t sure how long it will last; the Rebellion is growing every day, and they’re going to need more and more Captains, and more and more space for the additional ranking officers. But for now he’ll cherish the privacy that comes with having a room to himself, most of the time.

When he leaves the solace of his chambers, the noise catches up with him, as if it’s been hunting him through the halls. It takes the form of messengers, slipping by him to leave data pads at the doors of their superiors. Droids of every shape and size, humming steadily on errands and beeping out Force-knows-what in their electronic languages. Sometimes it’s just the sheer weight of his footsteps, carving out a path in this labyrinth of a base.

He rarely loses his way, even when deep in thought. His feet carry him where he needs to go, one way or another.

“Captain Muguruma, how are you?”

Kensei looks up with a jolt, the flickering light of the cafeteria nearly bringing back his headache. The cafeteria is always open, though there are peak hours. This time of day, the middle of the afternoon, is a slump, with just a few solitary figures hunched over their plates. They probably weren’t looking for a conversation, just a quiet meal before the squadron gets back, and the mess hall becomes crowded and filled with noise. (He has his own reasons, but the quiet is merely a bonus.)

He squints across the grates at the girl whose ladle has just blessed his tray. Most of the people who serve in the cafeteria lines are kids, teenagers whose parents are in the fight or recruits who he or someone else decided were _just too young and brash_ to hand a blaster just yet. Today, though, it’s the young lady from the medical bay. An adult, just barely, but medics are exempt, or more exempt, from any sort of informal age requirement. They need all the help they can get.

(She’d probably only been 15 the first time she patched him up — a burned hand, the result of maintenance work on a decommissioned freighter. She’d been more wide-eyed and eccentric back then, but no less steady as she applied salve, bandaged the wound, and gave him strict instructions not to use it for anything more complicated than opening a door. She hadn’t even flinched at his rank, or maybe she hadn’t noticed.)

“You’re working here too?” He frowns and accepts his tray. No one is paid to be in the Rebellion, with anything other than food and the supplies they need to carry out their duties. Nevertheless, it seems unnecessary for someone her age — probably only 17 or 18 — to have so much responsibility.

_Mashiro was 19 when she joined the Buzzard Squad. Shuuhei got his rank at 18. And I started fighting even younger than that._

She laughs. A light, carefree sound. He can’t help but wonder how long it will last in a place like this. “Oh, they don’t need me right now! We’ve been lucky these past few days, almost no injuries. And I like to be where the food is!”

He grunts and says, not unkindly, “You haven’t tasted food, if you think that’s what this is.”

He misses cooking. He misses having a proper place to cook, and people to cook for. He glares at the slop on his tray with the kind of unfounded jealousy that comes with knowing that he is needed elsewhere. Plenty of people can cook passably, but there are harder decisions to be made than whether to create plentiful, bountiful meals or to ration.

Then again, those decisions can be pretty damn tough, too.

She shrugs. “Well! It does what it needs to do, I guess.” And she has a fair point, so he has nothing to say.

She does, though. As he turns away, tray laden in hand, the girl named Orihime calls after him, “May the Force be with you!”

He doesn’t say anything, but he offers a nod in response.

 

* * *

 

The worst part is the waiting. It’s not like the early days, when he could throw himself at the Empire’s teeth and hope to choke them on the way down its throat. Now, he’s a _commodity_. He has value beyond his own prowess as a fighter. He has a _purpose_.

Besides, there’s a _reason_ they didn’t let Shuuhei join his company.

He passes time by sorting weapons. The armory is a well-guarded place, and he has to pass several security checks just to approach the vault with ammunition and explosives. The officer on duty two checks away from the armory itself nods as Kensei approaches. “Good to see you again, Captain Muguruma,” he says, and he makes to open the door.

“Nope,” Kensei says. “Try again.”

“Er… Right. Of course.” Kensei watches the young man, his greasy black hair swaying as he bends down to pull out the retinal scanner from a panel in the console. It’s a handheld device, nothing fancy, but it lights up green when the veritable teenager holds it up to Kensei’s left eye. “Sorry, sir, it’s just… don’t want to be rude…” Kensei holds his tongue and waits for the door to slide open.

The vault itself is a chasm in the heart of the ancient temple. If Kensei didn’t know better, he might assume that the steel racks of blasters and the crates of explosives had been hastily wheeled in here for temporary storage, not permanent safekeeping. After the blast door hisses shut behind him, his own blaster pistol stored in a weapons locker beyond it, Kensei flicks on the overhead lamp. He is, mercifully, alone.

Well, that isn’t entirely the truth. He’s alone except for a droid, the kind that looks vaguely humanoid but lacks the capacity to do much except function as a walking database for the contents of the armory. “How can I help you?” speaks the robotic voice.

“I’m fine,” he says. Then, after a moment of thought, “Show me your inventory lists.”

It’s not the backbreaking work he grew up on, lifting crates of everything from vitals to explosives when the old resistance didn’t have any equipment to do it themselves. To do this right, he has to do more than just count the number of grenades per crate, or the number of blaster bolts in each pack; Kensei has to check the charge on each, make sure there’s no leakage, no rust, no faulty wiring. A blaster rifle is no good to the Rebellion if the rebel who shoots it learns too late that the ammunition line is warped and won’t fuel the chambers; a crate of grenades is no good to the Rebellion if a chemical leak sends the whole armory up in one big explosion.

He takes apart a sniper rifle piece by piece and cleans each, then slips the metal components back together like sliding on a glove. The glass of the scope fogs when he places it against his eye and stares across the chamber, and he remembers another scope, another rifle, another day, many years before. Fitting small fingers around the barrel of a blaster and catching the recoil with his own arms. Smiling, genuinely smiling, at the blighted target a hundred meters away.

Kensei pulls the gun away from his eyes and stares at it. It’s a different model than the one he taught Shuuhei to shoot on, a newer gun with a slightly larger clip. Shuuhei’s current requisition is probably its twin. He tries to imagine how those fingers had grown strong, quick enough to take out a clip of blaster bolts and replace them before the enemy could find him and–

The dislodged barrel of the rifle clatters to the ground. Kensei stoops to pick it up, jams it back onto rifle, and replaces it in its case.

Instead he finds a case of concussive grenades. Several crates, actually, stacked one atop the other and shut with an old-fashioned scan key. Carefully he lifts one down — a job that takes two arms for him, and two men for anyone else — and unlocks it. The explosives, round and black and the size of his fist, gleam at him like beetles’ eyes. Individually, they can knock over a land vehicle; activated all together, they could collapse the entire base.

Kensei picks one up. It’s cool to the touch and just slightly weighted. He can envision in his mind the gentle arc it would take if lobbed just so, the vivid _pop!_ of an Imperial walker with its hatch sealed and a concussive explosion hissing out of it like a canister of oxygen superheated to bursting.

He wonders if that’s what it was like, that day. They wouldn’t tell him exactly what had happened, but he pictured something like that, sitting there in the medbay holding Shuuhei’s hand while a medic pressed medication to the bleeding, blistering right half of his face.

_Enough._

He gently puts the grenade back into its foam cradle and reminds himself that Shuuhei is more careful now. He hangs back; he waits for an opening; he doesn’t let himself get pinioned between a turret and a wall, waiting for the flashover. And Lisa is a good Captain.

And Mashiro is there.

Kensei takes in hand a pack of blaster bolts, a safe enough choice. Nothing to remind him of why he’s down here, or at least no more than usual. He counts to make sure that each pack is full, and that each case has all its packs, and that each crate is full. It’s tedious work, work that gives him a headache, and he welcomes it — it replaces the other scene in his head, the one where he stares through a pair of thermal telescopular lens as Mashiro, age 13, flies for the first time, and he feels nothing but fear.

It’s better than the nightmare where twin beams fall from the sky and her X-wing hurtles toward the forest floor, a smoldering mess.

When the call reaches him, deep in the womb of the Rebel base, that he’s wanted in the main hanger, he hands the manifest of the inventory back to the droid and departs without a word. Everything’s in its place, just as it was the last time he was here. And the time before that.

 

* * *

 

 

No news, in the Rebellion, is not good news. They keep transmissions to a minimum, sparing only the briefest of encrypted codes to cross the span of hyperspace. Not good to tempt fate; not good to risk the Empire uncovering Rebel intelligence, or (much, much worse) their destination.

Kensei has long since decided that it’s only a matter of time until the Empire discovers their little hideout here, on this broken and remote moon. No use in thinking about it too much. Just have to be ready for the urgent message to abandon the surface with everything he can carry in five minutes. (He always was good at running.)

For better or for worse, though, they have their protocol for missions, no matter the type, no matter the scope or importance: send word, any word, if successful; send nothing if failed.

It’s so, so simple that it’s almost stupid, and yet Kensei has seen, on three occasions, transmissions with more than one word, transmissions calling for help or claiming success but requesting a pickup. The commanders, of course, know better than to respond, and those squads were among the ones that he never saw again.

The fact that they transmit almost nothing off-planet except to and from the most secure of channels means that, above all else, Rebel intelligence, and those who carry it, are protected. There’s nothing above that in priority, even if it means lives. (Yet, for all their work, they still can’t figure out the most heavily-guarded secrets of the Empire. No matter how many they send, or how skilled they are.)

All these facts cross Kensei’s mind in passing as he climbs the winding ramps to the top of the base. Years on the run, and years in the Rebellion, have turned him into a clever, cunning, neurotic shell of a man, suited more for leading men into a firefight than talking about it after. After all this time, he still isn’t used to having a family. He isn’t used to being able to care.

The hanger, as always after a mission, has a small crowd gathered, speaking in moderate but carefully-concerted tones. No cheering, no nothing until the ships sail through the atmosphere and the veil of vines covering the hanger entrance. “What’s the word?” he says as he approaches.

The figure who hears him is a Wookiee, an Admiral named Kyyyoraku who’s been fighting for freedom almost as long as Kensei has been alive. He speaks in response, and though the red-haired human next to him looks mystified, Kensei’s features soften the slightest bit. The word, apparently, is ‘super’, which means that Kensei also knows who was responsible for sending such a message.

Still, that’s just one person he has on his conscience.

To avoid thinking about it so much, he glances around at the others in the crowd. There’s always a few oddballs, but most of the time these little gatherings are mostly kin to the returning heroes. And usually, he knows every single one of them, as he watched them take their first steps onto the base.

There’s Kyyyoraku, of course, who usually comes to anything involving his pilots. A shrewd, clever tactician not afraid to sacrifice however many it takes to win the day, but who remembers every single one he’s lost. Today, he’s here for Mashiro, so no doubt he recognizes the significance of her message.

There’s that red-haired punk kid, of Mandolorian blood but little resemblance in nature. A gentle soul, one Kensei thinks should have a life outside of Yavin 4 and the Rebel Alliance. Too bad it’s a family affair for him, with two little sisters already at home in the base and a father who’s been in the Rebellion for longer than Kensei has. Kensei wonders whether the kid’ll join Buzzard Squadron in a few years, or perhaps he’ll be in Shuuhei’s crew.

There’s Rangiku and her sidekick; if he didn’t know better he might assume they were brother and sister. Kensei watches them for a long moment. It’s been six or so years since she showed up in a stolen fighter; six years since he’d first laid eyes upon the pair of them, both in trashed Imperial getup, covered in blood (in the teenage boy’s case, his own). Since then, she’s managed to make herself and Izuru invaluable to the Rebellion.

There’s Renji, whose name he remembers because the kid is a pain in the neck, nothing short of insubordinate half the time. Kensei has his suspicions about why _he’s_ here, him and Izuru, at this gathering on this day, and when ( _when_ ) Shuuhei comes back there will be words, though Kensei isn’t sure _which_ words — whether he should encourage it or to let it die. As Kensei stares, Renji’s eyes turn to gaze straight back at him, making unbroken eye contact. He’s always been too unafraid for his own good.

There are others, of course. Isane, the medic on duty, ready for anyone who might come back in less than perfect condition, or worse; Shinji and Rose, in between supply runs and with their elbows brushing in a way that is all too conspicuous for Kensei to bear; Ukitake, who should really be in the medbay right now but has never been one to let a subordinate come back without his presence. Kaien, who seems to be supporting Ukitake by the armpit even as he booms a laugh at something Rangiku said.

They’re home now. They’re the second closest thing he has to family now. They’re what he has left to lose in this, the softer war.

 

* * *

 

 

Kensei doesn't like to stand around when there's work to be done, he really doesn't, but it's bad form to bring work to a party — particularly this kind of party. So instead he stands there and pretends to look interested while Rose prattles on about his favorite band and Shinji teases an oblivious Rose and Love tells Renji all about the benefits of a good bazooka in a blaster fight. He never did like being surrounded by so much noise, but it's almost nice, now. Almost comforting.

His eyes drown in the blue of the sky, and he almost misses it — the growing speck flying directly out of the sun, ever larger until it takes the shape of a transport. He has to squint to make sure it's really there. Squint, and look to the others to make sure that they, too, see it.

As he watches, Izuru's wayward gaze becomes fixed on the horizon, and Renji's joins it shortly thereafter. Kyyyoraku nudges Ukitake gently. Rangiku's animated conversation with Kaien is suspended as the latter points to the sky and says, "Look!" Everyone present whirls around to the hanger entrance — hardly a door, but overgrown with vines and difficult to see nonetheless — as the unmistakeable return of the drop-ship.

The group erupts in cheering and applause as the reverse thrusters set off a small whirlwind of dust, dirt, and feathers across the floor of the hanger. Kensei shields his eyes and waits, not frowning but not smiling. It's… it's not unusual for the squadron to take a different route to the base, to lead anyone that might be following them on a goose chase. Especially with a drop-ship.

He worries, though.

Applause continues as the ramp slides open with a hiss, revealing the ship's interior. Yadomaru skulks off the ship first, as if she’s a subordinate and not the commander — she’s never been one to take credit for her accomplishments, even now that she’s the one leading missions. She nods to Kensei as she passes, her lekku swaying. “Brought your boy back,” she says.

“Of course you did,” he returns, hoping he doesn’t sound as breathless and relieved as he feels. “Of course you did.”

It’s a full crew — the Alliance doesn’t do extraction much, only when the target has vital information, or when it was understood ahead of time that they would follow through. This is the latter, Kensei thinks, though they don’t tell him much about other missions, and he usually doesn’t ask. All the same, he’s more than relieved to see Shuuhei step onto the metal grating of the ship ramp, following behind a man whose bald head just barely obscures his own tousled black hair.

“Shuuhei!” Kensei’s mouth is open, but his were not the lips to speak — it was Renji, his voice rising above the din. Shuuhei’s head turns, his hands clutching a canvas bag with supplies and extra blaster bolts, and though he doesn’t smile, he nods at the part of the crowd where Kensei knows Renji to be.

Then he’s off the ramp. He doesn’t move any further to greet his friends; he doesn’t have to; they go to him, surrounding him with the same sort of eagerness granted to the great heroes of an era. Or, at least, Kensei thinks so.

Still Kensei hangs back, crossing his bare arms over his chest. It’s hard to imagine himself mingling with the rest — Renji is busy ruffling Shuuhei’s hair and having his own hair ruffled in return by the bald man, and Izuru’s prosthetic hand seizes Shuuhei’s even as Kensei looks on.

(No, he won’t interfere. How selfish, to presume that Shuuhei can’t protect his own happiness.)

The crowd splits as a high voice pierces the air. “Make way, make way! V-I-Ps coming through!” Rangiku has a way of splitting even the densest gathering, and now she does just that, pressing forward with enough tenacity to pull Renji away from his companions. “You’re coming too,” she adds as an aside, tugging Renji’s arm with her free hand. The other grasps for a better grip on Kaien’s sleeve.

They congregate at the base of the ramp for one last person. Slow off the ship, the final passenger of the ship finally disembarks. Her distinctly civilian outfit and her noticeably stylized bob-cut do nothing to disguise the now-bright expression in her face as she catches sight of her friends.

She’s very obviously younger than Shuuhei, but something about her countenance gives Kensei the impression that she is much, much older.

“Hey, Kuchiki!” Kensei can’t see it, but he can picture Kaien’s smug grin in his mind. “I told ya we’d get you back.”

Kensei doesn’t have time to listen to the girl’s reply — Shuuhei has caught sight of him and released Izuru’s hand. “Well?” he says, approaching with his slower smile. His pride has always been the nervous kind. “We did it.”

“I see that,” Kensei replies, more gruffly than he intends. A brief pause, and then he adds, “No trouble?”

“It was… well, we made it,” Shuuhei says, and Kensei despairs to know just how close he came to lying. “Don’t worry about it, alright? Captain Yadomaru made sure we all came back.”

“It’s not you I’m worried about,” Kensei says, and it’s half-true. Shuuhei grew up well. Shuuhei knows how to shoot a sniper rifle better than anyone else Kensei knows. Shuuhei isn’t the one that’s going to try and kill Shuuhei. Shuuhei isn’t the one that gave Shuuhei those scars.

Kensei watches those scars now, watches as Shuuhei’s face crinkles into something halfway between a grimace and a grin. He remembers vividly the day that those scars were fresh and raw and bleeding — Shuuhei’s first mission, ended prematurely. The bombers had claimed half his face and half his squad, but Kensei couldn’t care less about them. In the end, there are exactly two things he is intent on protecting.

In the softer war, all he can do to keep his children safe is make sure they’re ready for the harder battles to come. He’s not sure he believes in the Force, but he knows that there must be _something_ out there — something that chooses between the living and the dead. Something that decides who will be useful and necessary to destiny yet untold. And all _he_ can do to change the hand of fate is to make sure the two of them are as useful and necessary as possible.

Shuuhei is taller than him now, but still slighter, and so when Kensei grabs him by the elbows and pulls him in, there’s little he can do to stop himself. Not that he tries very hard; it’s only a scant few seconds before Shuuhei returns the gesture.

“I’m glad you’re safe,” Kensei says.

 

* * *

 

 

It's another hour, nearly, for the squadron to land. Ukitake and Kyyyoraku whisk Shuuhei and the rest of his team away for debriefing, and Kensei is left twiddling his thumbs. He reminds himself of all the things that probably haven’t gone wrong — if anyone was tailing Buzzard Squadron, they’ve probably been floundered in an asteroid field; planetary approach for A-wings takes longer, since they can’t risk coming in too fast and burning up in the atmosphere; Yoruichi might’ve had a secondary target in mind and gone to raid some Imperial facility, as she is wont to do. That last one doesn’t make Kensei any happier, but if Mashiro’s going to go off on some hair-brained half-considered plan, there’s no one he’d rather she do it with.

Much of the crowd has dispersed, having seen their loved ones safely home. Still there’s a sizable group present, and new people arrivingall the time. Rose and Love drag over a couple of crates and pick up a game of Pazaak, while Tessai fusses over the wiring on an astromech droid. Shinji props himself against an X-wing and says, “Don’t worry about ‘em. Mashiro’s such a good pilot, the only reason she’s not a squadron leader yet is cuz no one could beat out Yoruichi.”

“That’s not comforting,” Kensei grunts, though he is comforted. Mashiro has no interest in command, no interest in doing anything except shooting down more TIE fighters than anyone else in the Rebellion.

The tidally-locked moon brings with it long days and longer nights, eclipsed by the never-ending evenings when creatures of the forests creep into the stone structures of the base. Kensei and Shinji are watching a whisper bird wharking on top of a communications tower when they hear it — the sonic boom of a ship leaving hyperspace and dropping into the atmosphere.

Yoruichi is, as usual, the first to land, her craft arcing through the atmosphere in the kind of aerobatic trick that everyone but Kensei and Yoruichi herself claim must be impossible without the Force. It’s nothing for her to come out of hyperspace directly above a planet, nothing for her to use that extra speed for a display of her own prowess at the height of her triumph. She’s good, and she knows it, and most people can only _dream_ of having such quick reflexes.

“The rest of the squadron dropped out a ways off,” she says, scoffing jokingly. “They’ll be along.”

It takes somewhere between six and nine minutes for light from Yavin’s sun to reach the base, and the approach of several ships at near-light speed takes just as long. Yoruichi doesn’t have too much to say in the meantime, just scrubs the sweat off her brow and changes out of her flight suit behind a partition. She rejoins the group as the first of the A-wings drop into the atmosphere — not as acrobatic, but certainly graceful. Kensei quickly counts them and finds none missing.

Mashiro hops out of her craft with the same sort of exuberance as always and makes a beeline for him. “Keeeensei,” she drawls, “I blew up some TIEs for you.”

“You didn’t have to,” he says, and he doesn’t have to prompt her to throw herself at him. He grunts as her arms around his neck nearly bowl him over.

“Oh! Hang on,” she says then, and vanishes for a moment. Shinji grins at Kensei while he glowers back, and seconds later they hear a faint but horrid scratching as Mashiro takes off her helmet and marks four more tallies on the white surface.

She worries him. Not as much as Shuuhei does, but that’s only because he’s made peace with her involvement in this whole thing. If she wants to spend her days shooting down the enemy and her nights bragging to Hiyori and Lisa and Shinji and him about how many she killed that day, that’s her business. She’s old enough to make that choice for herself.

Well, as much as any of them have a choice in all this. She, out of the three of them, has the most in the matter.

“Kensei, I’m hungry,” she whines, sounding like a toddler, instead of a woman in her mid-twenties at the height of her strength.

“Then let’s go eat,” he says, and they do.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed it! I accept validation in the form of Kudos and comments, so please feel free to leave one or both of those.


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